Two state elections in one weekend. A minister in the frame at ICAC. You might think one or other side of politics would want to crow about an election result, or exploit some political discomfort, when Parliament resumed in Canberra on Monday.

But no, it appears the weekend election results were not clear-cut enough a win for either side to be enjoying themselves.

And Labor isn’t exactly in any position to be going on the front foot about the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, even as Assistant Treasurer
Arthur Sinodinos
found his name being mentioned more than once in the opening address of counsel assisting the inquiry on Monday.

No, in the House, both sides were much too keen to move straight on to score points about the looming re-run of the Senate election in Western Australia, even if it is still almost three weeks away.

For Labor that meant focusing on when voters may finally get to see the recommendations of the federal government’s Commission of Audit which, of course, is expected to contain all sorts of unattractive suggestions for cutting spending.

The attack was led by the feisty
Alannah MacTiernan
, Labor’s shadow parliamentary secretary for Western Australia, with a mercifully direct and succinct question.

“Will the Prime Minister release the Commission of Audit report before the Western Australian Senate election?"

Her question marked a shift to less waffly questions than we saw earlier in the year. Alas, it did not produce a direct answer.

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But being direct does highlight the extent to which ministers don’t answer.
Tony Abbott
did have a creative answer, however. “The job of government is not to bombard people with paper," he pronounced.

The Prime Minister and his ministers didn’t answer the question three or four times before Labor switched its attack, to accuse the government of cutting back benefits given to the orphans of war veterans.

Drawing fire

Now it is true orphans of war veterans are losing some payments. But only because lots of people will be losing some of the income support payments that were supposed to be funded by the mining tax, (the tax that hasn’t raised any money).

While Labor’s attack is therefore a bit dodgy, it leaves the Prime Minister squirming ever so slightly because Labor keeps contrasting his parsimony with war orphans with the generosity of his proposed paid parental leave scheme.

For its part, the government’s question time focus on the Senate race was on attacking Labor over the un-WA friendly mining and carbon taxes.

This, of course, continues its theme of talking more about Labor than it ever does about itself. The government didn’t even bother to run a Dorothy Dixer question about its big “cutting red tape" initiative, so eager was it to point out to anyone watching question time the evils of the Labor Party.

So Labor talked about the government not releasing a report, and the Coalition talked about Labor not passing the repeal of the mining and carbon taxes.

You can only wonder whether at some point between now and the WA Senate election on September 5, someone might have something positive to say.

After all, Abbott announced a major new defence spend in Adelaide, just 48 hours before last Thursday’s South Australian election.

It was a shame he chose to do that with a Liberal Party banner behind him, at a defence force base, once again putting the military in the political firing line.